No Upset: Team USA Deserved World Cup Defeat
Did U.S. Freeze Brooklyn's Bridges?
I’m old enough to vaguely recall watching the 1972 Olympic Men’s Basketball Final, when Team USA was robbed of the gold medal after referee incompetence incredulously allowed the Soviet Union three chances to score the winning basket at the buzzer. Needless to say, I didn’t take it well, even for a child.
Unfortunately, I also never matured enough for the sting of that defeat to pass, and ever since, each subsequent international loss has had an illogically outsized impact on my psyche. I seethed over the bricklaying 1988 Olympic team that Head Coach John Thompson selected, the debacle that was the 2004 squad, and several ensuing World Cup and Championship failures. On the flip side, I wholeheartedly endorsed the poundings the 1992 Dream Team delivered on overmatched opponents and I became a Kevin Durant fan long before he joined the Brooklyn Nets because of his heroics as a member of National Teams. Even though it became evident that other countries were creeping closer to competing with Team USA in FIBA tournaments, even against NBA players, I was thrilled that the U.S. prevailed more often than not in these events when virtually every other human couldn’t have cared less.
Somehow, though, I don’t think Germany’s 113-111 victory over the U.S. in Friday’s FIBA World Cup semifinals will have much of a lasting effect on me. It’s not because most of this country’s best players opted out (the only participants from the three 2023 All-NBA teams were Canada’s Shea Gilgeous-Alexander and Slovenia’s Luka Doncic). Nor do I believe it’s because I have finally grown up. It’s more a recognition that the NBA and FIBA are two different games, sort of like Freestyle versus Greco-Roman wrestling, and that other countries have better adapted their games to fit the FIBA rules.
For instance, the NBA does all it can to stimulate isolation plays, the sort that emphasizes their players’ extraordinary athleticism. The crackdown on hand-checking, the reluctance to call travels, etc.—they’re all meant to showcase these amazing professionals for maximum fan entertainment.
Not so at the World Cup, which is somehow called less strenuously when it comes to fouling yet more strict whenever a pivot foot is lifted a tad prematurely. In addition, zone defenses are allowed here, so teams can keep defenders in the paint to turn those one-on-one forays into one-on-three’s. Some of the U.S. players, like Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brinson, and Tyrese Halliburton, are so expertly skilled at penetrating that they can beat these walls, but it isn’t as sustainable as the ball-and-player movement practiced by other countries who often have the extra benefit of way more continuity.
A couple of Lithuania’s 14 made three-pointers in 25 attempts (56%) during their 110-104 win over Team USA in Sunday’s second round were lucky heaves, but the vast majority were high-quality open looks set up by precise fundamental basketball principles—screen-setting, cutting, and passing—the sort of things that aren’t prioritized in today’s NBA. U.S. offense is encapsulated by Edwards’ high-flying acrobatics at the rim and step-back 3s. Sure, he can make many, but he can also shoot you out of games.
Defensively, Nets fans must have had mind-jarring flashbacks watching Team USA and its switch-everything approach. Both Lithuania and Germany punished mismatches down low and bludgeoned the Americans on the offensive glass. In Friday’s crunch time, Germany was able to hunt U.S. guard Austin Reaves unmercifully, with get point guard Dennis Schroder easily blowing past him to get open looks for himself or his teammates who were left free by U.S. help defenders. Though the U.S. roared back from a 12-point deficit to get within 108-107 with 1:35 remaining, Schroder made sure they never got over the hunt with an assist to Andreas Obst off an inbounds play and then an easy pull-up jumper after getting a step on Reaves.
Would this Germany squad, which included its best NBA players, have beaten a U.S. team featuring Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, et al? Maybe once in 50 tries. But they might be able to hang close in a bunch of those games with the same lights-out (43.3%) three-point shooting. And who knows what will happen at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris if Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), and Joel Embiid (France, if he so declares) sign up?
Much to my dismay, the days of absolute Team USA supremacy in men’s basketball are done. I’d better get over it.
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It was great to see Nets rising star Mikal Bridges assert himself a bit in the last few World Cup games. I just wish U.S. Head Coach Steve Kerr prodded his team to let Bridges do more.
Over his last three games, Bridges averaged 18.3 points per game on a ridiculous 73/75/100 shooting split. Spot-up 3s, mid-range pull-ups, contested layups—they were all going in. All the while acting as the point-of-attack defender on the opponent’s top perimeter threat.
So, how come he’d go extended minutes without even touching the ball? On most set plays, Bridges was stationed in the corner, sometimes coming up to take a dribble handoff. Rarely did he get to run a pick-and-roll or clear-out.
Understand that those 55 points he scored came on just 26 field goal attempts. That’s 8.7 per game, or about what Edwards takes in a quarter. (Sorry if it seems like I’m going off here on Edwards—he’s clearly on the cusp of superstardom and has the potential to also be an All-NBA defender if he maintains his ball-pressure physicality in league play—but it sure looked to me like he was sometimes freezing out Bridges for whatever reason)
I got why Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson was mostly relegated to the bench down the stretch—he was in a shooting slump, which can sometimes happen with U.S. players who don’t like the feel of the different FIBA ball (I remember Bojan Bogdanovic once telling me the reverse, how his slow start for Brooklyn was related to getting accustomed to the switch back to the NBA ball after playing in a FIBA event). So, it’s not Brooklyn bias to wonder why Bridges wasn’t more of an offensive priority in these games.